Julia Ireland, assistant professor of philosophy, has been awarded a $6,000 summer stipend from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Ireland joins a slim 7 percent of applicants typically funded in a given year.

The award is designed to “support individuals pursuing advanced research that is of value to humanities scholars, general audiences, or both,” says the NEH website. “Summer Stipends support full-time work on a humanities project for a period of two months, support projects at any stage of development and are awarded to individual scholars.” Applicants with college or university affiliations, such as Ireland, must be nominated by their institutions.

Ireland will use the stipend to support two months of research for the final chapter of her forthcoming book, “To Become German: Heidegger’s Hölderlin.” The specific chapter is titled “Waiting for the God of Gods,” and it explores the connection between Heidegger’s analysis of the death of the gods and his tendency towards a conception of political messianism.

“I am thrilled to have received this award,” Ireland said. “It’s a tremendous vote of confidence in my book project and on the significance of Heidegger writings on poetry. The strength of the book lies in the depth of its original research, which includes not only the forthcoming translations, but my archival research these past three years.”

The NEH is an independent, taxpayer-supported federal agency that seeks to bring academic projects to a wide public audience through grant-making. It fields a number of unique awards outside of its NEH Summer Stipends.